If you’re a political liberal — or just someone who has a sense of fair play — listening to two straight days of talk on WRKO-AM isn’t easy. With the governor’s election looming and Republican Kerry Healey trailing badly in the polls, RKO’s on-air talent has been doing everything it can for the Healey Campaign. Bald-faced distortions of Democrat Deval Patrick’s positions, ad hominem attacks on independent candidate Christy Mihos, fawning praise for Healey’s strategy, verbatim regurgitation of Healey’s talking points, unabashed race baiting — nothing is off limits. But by late last week, after the debut of Healey’s controversial garage-rape ad and the Faneuil Hall gubernatorial debate, even RKO eminence grise Howie Carr (who’s inadvertently helped Patrick by encouraging Mihos and ripping Healey for years) seemed ready to give up on Healey’s chances. We listened so you didn’t have to: here, in all its ugly glory, is the best and worst of 48 hours of RKO programming.
Thursday, October 19
Scott Allen Miller, 6 am–9 am
Pro-Healey talking point: the great new Romney-Healey plan to tear down the tolls
The man known as “Scotto” has a tough job today: hammer both Patrick and Mihos for balking at a new proposal, by the Romney-controlled Mass Turnpike Authority board, to consider dismantling the Mass Pike tolls west of Weston. Why tricky? Because while Miller says Patrick is being too cautious about the proposal, he also says Mihos isn’t cautious enough, which means he’ll sound like Patrick when criticizing Mihos and vice versa.
Here’s how Miller pulls it off: while grousing about Patrick, he ignores Patrick’s actual remarks on the subject. (“If we can afford to maintain the quality and the safety of the roads, then we ought to do it,” Patrick said, but added that the new proposal should be studied further.) Instead, Miller constructs a fake dialogue with stock Patrick sound clips:
Miller: “I can understand Christy Mihos doesn’t want his one issue to be co-opted here. But for Mr. Deval Patrick — for Deval Patrick to act like he doesn’t know whether this is a good idea or not, even in principle — I can understand saying, ‘Look, I gotta do the math on this sort of thing,’ but for him just to say — ”
Patrick [fake quote]: “I gotta look at that.”
Miller: “No! I mean, do you like the idea, yes or no?”
Patrick [fake quote]: “I don’t have all the answers.”
Miller: “Okay, yeah, I know, I know, but if it would make sense financially, would you like to do it?”
Patrick [fake quote]: “I gotta look at that.”
Miller: [Exasperated sigh]
Later, Miller gets Mihos on the air. According to Mihos — a long-time advocate of toll elimination — the new plan isn’t credible because its legality hasn’t been established and because, instead of doing anything, it just calls for further study. If you’re going to remove the tolls, Mihos argues, you do all the necessary legal research and then you remove the tolls.
Miller thinks that’s bullshit. “Oh, come on, Christy,” he retorts. “In my little town of Needham, they don’t just decide to build a school. What they do is they say, ‘All right, let’s look at it. Let’s investigate it, let’s get the cost, let’s find out what the legal ramifications are.’ They don’t just decide one night at a school-board meeting to build a new high school. . . . They have to take time to look at how much it’s gonna cost and what the ramifications are.” (Note the similarity to Patrick’s actual comments.)
Then Miller moves in for the kill: “It’d be reckless otherwise to govern that way,” he scolds Mihos. “And if I may say it, it sounds like you’re advocating that sort of impulsive form of government. And I don’t think that’s necessarily very good for the state.” Mihos pauses, then tries again, apparently unaware that the game is rigged.
John DePetro, 9 am–noon
Pro-Healey talking point: the great new Healey TV ad
DePetro seems poised to follow Miller’s lead, since he gets Mihos on the air just after nine. But DePetro — a/k/a “The Independent Man” — is notably less combative with Mihos than Miller was, maybe because he’s hot for Mihos’s 25-year-old daughter, Ashley. “Hey, uh, Christy, I certainly look forward to seeing Ashley Mihos,” DePetro says as the interview wraps up. When Mihos conveys Ashley’s greetings, DePetro shouts to his producer, “You hear that! Ashley says hello!” (DePetro’s Web site features several photos of Ashley.)
Instead, DePetro focuses on a new Healey ad that features a rapist stalking a woman through an empty parking garage, and quotes Patrick calling convicted rapist Ben LaGuer “eloquent” and “thoughtful.” Sex and violence have been good for DePetro’s career: when he argued that Imette St. Guillen paved the way for her own rape and murder last February by staying out late, alone and drunk, in New York City, DePetro’s national profile rose for a week or two. Now, DePetro can’t heap enough praise on Healey’s new spot, calling it “absolutely awesome,” “so powerful,” “maybe the most powerful commercial I’ve seen,” “very dramatic,” “a brilliant political ad,” a “very powerful commercial,” “very gripping,” “very dramatic,” “a woman’s worst nightmare,” and “very effective.”
